


Smashed, not Broken

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:32:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington, hurt/comfort, romance, multi-chapter, starts as G, progressing to M. Not my characters, no profit involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At the Hospital

Liz is on the first plane to Dallas without stopping at her apartment for luggage. Apparently she's listed somewhere as Red's next of kin. She cabs directly from the airport to the hospital, a collection of confusingly irregular glass towers, like a huge Christmas ornament that fell and smashed without shattering. She texts Cooper that she's arrived, but not the name of the hospital, even though Dembe gave it to her as soon as she touched down and turned her phone back on.

Her badge gets her past the front desk, but at the nurse's station, there's no Reddington in the computer. It takes another call to Dembe's cell to get her past them to a small private elevator, then up to a quiet floor with only a few luxurious single rooms on a wide, clean hall.

He's asleep in a hospital bed, his head wrapped in bandages, his broken leg elevated. The covers are half-way down his chest, exposing his bare shoulders above the tight wrappings that confine his broken ribs. One of his hands is visible, each finger carefully splinted.

Even the Concierge of Crime is no match for a drunk in a Ford F-150.

Dembe is sitting in a chair by a window to one side on the bed, reading on a tablet, and two tough little men in private security uniforms sit just inside the door.

"Come in, Elizabeth." Dembe stands and draws his chair to the side of the bed, then retreats to a love seat at the far side of the room.

"How is he?" she asks, as if she didn't just ask him that two minutes ago.

"He's a strong man; he will recover, in time."

Liz sits down in the chair and drops her purse to the floor.

Red is hooked to a number of machines; Liz turns her eyes from the indignity of all those fluids and watches him sleep.

There are faint freckles on his bare shoulders; a swathe of purple bruises mar the side of his neck and disappear beneath the bandages. He's unshaven, and his chest hair matches the graying stubble, darker than his pale lashes and brows.

There are deep circles under his closed eyes; he looks smaller and older and unnaturally vulnerable like this, all his power and vitality emptied away.

Liz though she had watched Red sleep on the jet before, reclining in his supple leather seat, but now she thinks perhaps he had just closed his eyes.

She isn't here to be sure an agency asset is protected; his own people are quite clearly on the job.

She doesn't know why she's here at all.

Liz looks over at Dembe but he's completely involved in his device.

"Izzie?"

Red's eyes are open, focusing vaguely on her. His lips part as he tries to raise his unbroken hand, the elbow immobilized in a cast, towards a plastic cup of water with a straw on a rolling table beside the bed.

"Here, Red, let me get that."

Lizzie stands and lifts the water cup above Red's chest, fitting the straw to his lips. He takes small sips, slowly, not lifting his head from the pillows propped up behind him. There's a heart-breaking uncertainty in the way he looks at her as she sets the cup back on the table next to a tall plastic pitcher.

"More?" she asks him, and he closes his eyes and gives a tiny shake of his head, then winces.

"Lizzie" he says, with a quiet note of satisfaction. His head rolls to the side and his mouth falls open; she watches the big vein throbbing his neck as he sleeps again. 

Liz wants to touch him, as if only the feel of him will make her believe he's still alive, but she knows he needs to rest. And he's usually so buttoned up, or buttoned down, whatever the correct expression is for the extreme formality of his daily wear, that touching him while he's sleeping feels wrong. She settles back into her chair with a sigh. It has been a long day and she's stiff and tired and hungry.

"Drink this, Elizabeth."

As if summoned by psychic powers, Dembe proffers her a tall Styrofoam cup of coffee. Liz sips, and looks around to see that a cart with an array of plastic cups and plates has been wheeled into the room.

"Thank you." She takes another sip. The coffee is sweet and creamy, just the right tone of mocha. "Thank you so much for remembering, that's just how I take it."

Dembe smiles and joins the bodyguards who are dividing up the food from the cart. He returns and hands her a small bag with two cookies. Chocolate macadamia nut.

With caffeine and sugar, Liz is starting to revive. 

Outside the hospital room window, the sun is setting in an enormous sky, swathes of orange and peach in the west, with high clouds off to the north. 

A nurse comes in and takes Red's pulse and temperature, then hangs new bags of fluids, noting everything on an electronic tablet. He doesn't wake, just shifting irritably beneath her efficient touch.

Once the nurse leaves, Liz crosses to the cart and selects soup and crackers from remaining choices, which she eats at Red's bedside.

"Do you want to stay here tonight?" asks Dembe around eight pm. 

"What?"

"On the fold-out couch?"

He gestures at the love seat.

Liz blinks. She had supposed she would remain at the hospital at his bedside, but Red was just sleeping, albeit uneasily. 

"I don't want to leave him alone" Dembe says, leaning down so his words are just for her and not for the guards. "There is a very slight chance - this was not an accident."

"The driver is dead" protests Lizzie.

Dembe rubs his hands together. Such big hands - Lizzie feels so comfortable with Red's constant companion that she sometimes forgot his size.

"Nevertheless, why did he hit our town car without braking at all? Our driver did not see him coming."

"You weren't driving?"

"We had planned to meet at my hotel this morning - I arrived from Sydney yesterday."

They both look down at Red as he coughs.

"I didn't make his travel arrangements, so I do not know who in our organization knew he was coming here, and the manner of his travel."

"So you can't be sure who you can trust."

Dembe bows his head slightly.

"Exactly. That will take some research, research I can't do from here."

"If you're not too tired, I'll get some sleep first" Liz decides. "You can wake me any time after midnight."

Dembe smiles and she realizes he's relieved. That probably should scare her.

"Then pleasant dreams, Elizabeth."

He walks over to the love seat and swiftly pulls it out into a couch, then adds sheets, pillows and a thick comforter from a deep drawer in the cabinet beside it.

The guards watch stolidly.

Leaning down, Liz lays her hand lightly on Red's cheek. It's warm, and scratchy with stubble. There are tiny flecks of blood in the curve of his ear.

How did she find herself here?

Crossing the room, Liz folds her overcoat and her suit jacket over the back of the love seat and steps out of her shoes. She tucks her gun under a pillow before lying down on the side of the bed closest to Red. Then she arranges herself on top of the comforter and folds the other side of it over her fully clothed body.

She thinks it will be hard to sleep, but the next thing she knows Dembe is shaking her awake.

"It's 2:00."

Liz sits up, yawning, and notices that the security guards have changed shift - now there's a heavyset man and a small woman with hennaed hair in a bun and tattoos on her knuckles.

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Liz rises, belts on her holster, and crosses the room in her bare feet to sit in the chair beside Red. Dembe lifts up the comforter and lies down on the fold out couch at an angle, pulling the covers over his face.

Red is twisted and angled a little in bed, as if resisting sleeping on his back as his broken leg requires. His eyes move behind his eyelids and she knows he's dreaming.

He could have died today. 

Liz has spent the last six months telling herself how much she values his expertise, how he's enhanced her career, how many truly evil people he's helped her bring to justice.

She can't do that any more; the phone call this morning had been shocking, forcing her to see what she had been hiding from herself. 

Her world would be empty without him.

Liz looks down at Red and hopes he doesn't suspect. She's never seen pity in those shrewd, knowing eyes, and she never, ever wants to.


	2. In Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Good Order

It's been only two nights, but Dembe has arranged a hotel suite, a private ambulance, two more teams of security guards for the following morning.

Red wants to get moving again.

While Dembe collects discharge orders and prescriptions, Liz takes a cab to the nearest mall and pays the cab driver to wait while she snatches up clothes, sailing through Anne Klein and Gap and a surprisingly well-stocked little shoe boutique with her seldom-used credit cards. 

She's told Cooper she thinks there could be a threat to the bureau. If someone can get to Reddington, they can get to the Post Office.

Liz has been wearing the same clothes for three days now - there was a little excitement at the hospital the previous day, when one of Red's many prescriptions was miss filled and he became violently agitated. She wasn't comfortable leaving him until now. 

Could they be sure it was an accident?

Dembe is very sure it was not, but they don't have time to scrutinize the hospital.

Knowing they are about to depart, the nurses have been coming and going, faces inscrutable, with no pretense at warmth after being subjected to the pungency of Red's language when upset.

Liz has never hear him swear like that; has never heard anything so inventive. It was as if the drugs had uncorked some version of Red from a former life, and now the cork is firmly back in place.

It is horrifying, and yet weirdly intimate, to know something like that about the inside of his head.

She wants to know more.

Pulling up to the circle drive in front of the hospital, she is struck by the sound of approaching sirens from several directions. But that makes sense, it's a hospital. She just didn't remember it being so noisy when she arrived.

Paying the cab driver with cash, Liz hefts her bags and makes her way through the lobby, where a few clusters of men and women, mostly in scrubs, are standing about whispering. 

The nursing station is deserted.

Dropping her shopping behind the counter, Liz pulls out her weapon and heads for the stairs, infinitely grateful that she took the time the previous day to explore this wing of the hospital. She runs up two flights and punches in the door code on the key pad that allows her access without swiping a hospital badge, automatically noting as she did the day before the security vulnerability this implies.

As the door opens she can hear heated conversations.

Weapon at the ready, she takes a breath and steps out into the hall.

A passing nurse gives a little shriek and drops a tablet. It shatters at her feet.

Dembe looks down the hall at her and gives her just enough of a smile that she immediately holsters her weapon. He's standing in front of a seated security guard who is hunched over, clutching her shoulder.

There are two figures in black knit caps and green scrubs sprawled on the floor in pools of blood. Their weapons are piled against the wall next to Dembe. Pistols with silencers, and a surprisingly wide array of knives.

"He's fine" says Dembe, as she strides down the hall and peers into the room. A second security guard, apparently unharmed, is standing with his back to the wall taking short, deep breaths. The head of Red's hospital bed is propped up, but he's leaning back against his pillows with his eyes closed. 

"We need to get out of here" says Dembe. He turns his head and issues a few terse instructions to the security guard. "Those men were both Chinese."

"So?" asks Liz, looking around as if there's something missing. Right, she dropped her shopping and her purse - she needs to go downstairs and retrieve them.

"The drunk man - he was also Chinese."

Liz widens her eyes at Dembe.

"And ...?" she prompts him.

"I believe now that the man is responsible is a recent customer. A very dissatisfied customer. Very, very connected. Even more dangerous."

Liz looks towards the hallway, where the injured security guard is being removed on a rolling metal gurney surrounded by uniformed hospital guards. 

"And all the knives?"

Dembe looks even more bleak.

"To create suffering. This man, his enemies die slowly."

Liz looks at Red and a bright, cold stab of fear catches her unawares. He's usually on the offensive, so far ahead of her, and now she and Dembe are scrambling to protect him.

'We're going downstairs now," says Dembe. "Right now. I have arranged something."

"Let me get my things" responds Liz, regretting that she hadn't showered before shopping, even if it would have meant redressing in her now somewhat dingy suit. She hurries back down the stairs, and when she returns with her purse and her bags, Dembe has Red loaded onto another rolling gurney.

Retreating, but in good order.

After flashing her credentials at hospital security, they ride down a back elevator labeled 'Staff Only' to find the uninjured security guard waiting beside a sleek shiny ambulance in an all but empty underground garage. The only other vehicle is an older, a boxy truck-style ambulance with "Sunnyside Rehab" painted above a stylized yellow sun that looks like the artist stole it from a box of Raisin Bran.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

Liz follows Dembe as he rolls Red down the concrete loading dock to the older ambulance while behind her, the security guard climbs into the passenger seat of the newer vehicle and slams the door. She hears the engine start.

"Distraction" says Dembe. "Help me shift him."

Liz hurries over and flings her bags as far forward as she can in the ambulance, then helps Dembe lower Red's gurney, IV bags swaying, and load it into the ambulance. He hops up and clamps the wheels down, then offers her his hand.

Once she is securely belted into a foldout seat next to Red, who has his eyes half-open and seems to be humming, Dembe hurries to the driver's seat, dons a white coat and cap, and starts the engine.

"How much morphine did you give him?" Liz calls forward.

"You don't want to know."

They jolt out of the parking lot, following the ambulance with the security guard. There are several turns through the hospital district, past clinics and offices and other, more conventionally designed hospital towers, before they can access the freeway.

'Where are we going?" asks Liz, watching the slow progress of the vehicle ahead of them. They seem to be hitting every single red light.

"We're on the schedule as transporting a nursing home resident to a rehabilitation facility in Fort Worth" Dembe says, meeting her eyes in the rear view mirror. "Once we get there, I will assess our options."

Dembe draws the ambulance to a gentle stop as ahead of them, the ambulance with the security guard runs through the last of the green light and proceeds a few car lengths before halting in traffic once more. A motorcycle turns left at the light and pulls in ahead of them, separating them further.

"I am considering several ...."

The light ahead changes as they wait, and as the first ambulance pulls into the next intersection, a huge silver tanker barrels into the intersection and tears through the side of the ambulance, rolling it, before both vehicles burst into flames.

"Turn right" screams Liz, but Dembe is already turning. He flips on the flashing blue lights and the siren and speeds up two blocks, then begins weaving his way back towards the freeway. Away from the accident.

"You don't think I should call in transport?" asks Liz, looking out the back window as they pull onto the multi-lane freeway and slide over into the far left lane, still accelerating as traffic melts out of their way in response to the siren. No highway patrol yet, just ordinary vehicles.

Dembe shakes his head.

"This man, he has eyes on us. He would see retreating to your agency as a weakness."

"So?" asks Liz. Red seems to be weathering their hasty flight quite well, although occasionally he strains at the broad straps which hold him securely in place.

"He would never stop pursuing us, like a shark scenting blood." Dembe shakes his head slowly as they fly down the highway. "Only a financial attack might work, he would respect that, but it takes so much time to set up ..."

Liz sits back in her seat and shuts her eyes for a moment.

"I do not think we can take a chance on Sunnyside either, now."

He slams his palms down on the steering wheel, just once.

"There are too many of them."

Liz swallows hard. They are traveling 90 miles an hour, in a completely conspicuous vehicle, and now they don't know where they are going.

Dembe meets her eyes in the rear view mirror once again.

"If we do not survive this, I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to get to know you."

Her throat tightens. She has to choose, and choose quickly.

It goes against the meticulous care of long years, the most sacred promise of her childhood, but if she can't save Red, what will her secrets matter anyhow?

"I know a place," she says, leaning forward. "But first, we need to find a rental car agency that rents 10 passenger vans."

Talking quickly, she explains her plan to Dembe.


	3. In Which They Hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz chooses to hide Red somewhere no one can find him.

What they need now are allies. But allies neither they nor their enemy have ever met.

Shutting off the siren but leaving the lights flashing, Liz parks the ambulance a block from the rental car kiosk and watches Dembe walk away. He's back in only a few minutes driving a long white van.

She pulls out into traffic after him, shutting off the lights, and they drive to Home Depot, where he circles slowly as she watches from a parking space on the street.

It's just after lunch, and he's finished quickly, collecting ten men wearing work boots and backpacks, and carrying water bottles, from the shelter of various trees and shrubs at the perimeter of the parking lot.

Then Dembe follows her to the Chevy dealership nearby, where she parks the ambulance in an empty slot in front of the showroom. The white van pulls in next to her, some of the men looking curiously out the windows, others staring apathetically forward. 

She hops out of the ambulance and a very young, very thin man approaches her. 

"Yes, ma'am, can I help you?"

His suit is cheap polyester, his dress shoes are old-fashioned but gleam with polish, and his wedding ring is shiny new.

Liz turns to Dembe, who is standing at her shoulder now, white hat and jacket discarded to reveal a dress shirt and immaculately cut slacks, and holds out her hand.

Ceremoniously, he places a thin black credit card in her hand.

She turns and bats her eyelashes slowly at the salesman, who begins to redden.

"Just this one?" she asks Dembe, without looking back at him.

"You could buy the dealership, if you wanted it" he responds in a deep voice with a subservient note she has never heard before.

Liz bares her teeth in a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. She's playing Mrs. Reddington now. She and Dembe, they're both playing for time.

"Do you know what you're looking for ma'am?" the salesman asks her, a few tiny beads of sweat appearing on his forehead as he stares at the thin black card.

"Ten Suburbans, no, eleven" Liz pronounces airily. "I need them right away. Places to go, people to see."

The salesman's eyes goggle at her. 

"What ... what sort of features do you require?" he begins.

Liz shrugs and spins on one heel to the left.

"Those will do" she announces, gesturing at a row of shiny black vehicles adorned with paper dealer plates. "I need the keys now - just run my card and e-mail me the paperwork."

She holds out the card to the salesman, then glances over her shoulder at Dembe.

"You can email that back to him today, before 5:00, can't you?"

"Those, those are special editions, all the bells and whistles" the salesman stammers. "Not, not, the base price at all."

Liz gives him her best version of Reddington's smirk.

"Run the card, I don't need a receipt."

He takes the card and he runs, actually runs, back into the dealership, his overlarge coat tails flapping behind him.

"Don't forget the keys, I need those keys" she calls after him. "And tell your manager I only want to deal with you. I don't need to speak with him at all."

In a surprisingly short time, the transaction is complete. It takes Liz longer to purchase her weekly groceries. She's glad Dembe filled Red's prescriptions at the hospital already in preparation for departure - for this to work, they can't leave any kind of trail that could distinguish this Suburban from the others.

When he returns, Liz distracts the salesman by asking him about warranties and undercoatings and how he chose this profession, this dealership.

She can only hope that Red is still asleep; she hasn't been able to check on him since they arrived.

Gathering the men from the van around him in a circle, Dembe hands out keys and maps and instructions. And cash.

Each man is to drive to a different small Texas town, fanning out across the state. They are to stop at least once an hour for at least five minutes, then keep driving. Upon arrival, they are to find house with a green or blue mailbox and park the vehicle outside that house on the street. 

"Take the keys and leave town as quickly as possible." Dembe instructs them. "If you come back after a week, and the vehicle is still there, it's yours."

The men all nod solemnly.

"Just don't drive it in Dallas or Fort Worth" he cautions them. "And I can't tell you what to do once you complete your assignment, but I do not recommend that you go to the police."

The men all grin at that, weary faces creasing into lines of genuine amusement.

"Let's go, boss," says one of them, and Dembe waves them away.

As the line of Suburbans pulls away from the dealership, Liz clambers up into the last vehicle and drives off with a cheery wave out the window, followed by Dembe in the ambulance. They stop three blacks away, in the overhang of an empty parking garage, and move Red's gurney swiftly from the back of the ambulance to the Suburban, folding down the seats and lowering it flat.

He's querulous and frustrated with immobility, and Liz feels guilty that she's glad when Dembe gives him another shot and he subsides.

They abandon the ambulance and drive south and west towards the Texas Hill Country, taking the back roads like the other ten identical vehicles.

At the first Greyhound bus station they pass, Liz pulls to a stop and lets Dembe out.

"Be careful" she says. "We're counting on you."

She digs into her purse on the passenger seat next to her and hands him her phone.

"No electronics where we're going."

"I wish you had a nurse with you."

"I'll manage" Liz assures him, not quite so sure herself. "I've had advanced first aid, how bad could it be?"

"He's going to be furious," Dembe predicts.

"He's going to be alive" Liz snaps back, trying and failing to keep the edge out of her voice.

"Don't come back until he's completely recovered," says Dembe in a resigned tone.

"Six weeks at least" she returns. "Maybe eight."

Dembe frowns. "You have enough food for eight weeks, where you're going?"

It touches her almost to tears that he hasn't asked exactly where she's taking Red.

"Try eight years - more if we plant some seeds."

Dembe grins, his expression lightening.

"Warm up that shortwave when you're ready for pick-up."

"Will do" she returns. "Please be listening for me, Dembe."

"Always." 

He stretches, rolling his big shoulders, then walks away, not looking back. 

Liz puts the Suburban back into gear and keeps going.

**  
Driving into a flat empty landscape until the sky darkens, Liz is relieved to reach the familiar curves and dips of the Hill Country.

She tells herself the story in her mind, using the old memory tricks Sam taught her to find her way. The trees are older, there are more trailers, more houses, but the narrow, unmarked country roads are still the same.

She's getting close - she has to choose a gate.

Liz chooses east. She pulls up to the metal ranch gate, winds down the window, and presses the buzzer. It's warmer here, and the air smells like moldy hay. She can hear barking in the distance.

"Yes? What do you want? We're closed until Monday."

"Sam sent me" she says, and looks into the rear view mirror as the electric gate slides open.

She nurses the Suburban up the steep, curving dirt road, her headlights passing slowly over the house and then the long dark rectangle of the kennels. Glinting on the wire dog runs and the high, barbed wire fences.

A few minutes later, she spots the old barn. Slowing even further, she turns right down a track that is hardly more than two ruts in a field. The Suburban bounces and jostles Red. He moans twice, then he's silent, so she pretty sure he's awake.

She should have stopped to give him another shot almost an hour ago, but some instinct keeps driving her forward. 

She can't believe how badly she needs a restroom, a bath, and something to eat.

Stopping outside the barn, she clambers down with stiff legs and unlocks the three padlocks on the barn door, pulls it wide on protesting tracks, and drives the Suburban all the way in. She kills the engine and then the lights.

It's dark and still. It's been so long since she was here.

"Where are we, Lizzie?"

"Somewhere safe. I'll be right back."

Pulling a tiny Maglite from her purse, Liz finds the gas cans where she expects them to be. She takes a moment to crouch behind a bale of hay to relieve herself, then stands and stretches with a sigh of relief.

She fills the battered green ATV and it starts on the first try.

Climbing on, she pulls it slowly around to the back of the Suburban, puts it in neutral, sets the brake.

When she swings open the back doors of the Suburban, Red blinks at the sudden overhead light.

"What are you doing, Lizzie?" he asks her in a perfectly ordinary tone. She climbs up and gathers her shopping bags and satchel Dembe gave her with Red's medicines, and throws them on the seat of the ATV.

"We can't take the car where we're going" she informs him, getting on her knees to unlock the wheels of the gurney.

"I think it would unwise for me to sit up" Red pronounces. He's lifting his head up as well as he can, given the tight straps holding down, trying to see what she's doing.

"You're not going to" says Liz. Carefully, using all her strength, she rolls the gurney until it starts to tilt down towards the metal rack on the back of the ATV. "This is probably going to hurt a little."

She looks down at Red, and his lips twitch, then he closes his eyes, which she takes for assent.

She does her best, but it's still a jolt that wrings a little grunt of pain from him when she manages to tip the gurney down to lie sideways across the rack.

Then she ties it down securely with the bungee cords she finds hanging from a nail on the wall of the barn. She throws a blanket over Red as she secures the gurney and then her other bags - his shoulders are still bare and his arms are strapped down so he can't do anything to cover himself.

Liz doesn't apologize for hurting him - she's afraid she'll burst out crying and they still have a long way to go.

There's a pair of military grade night vision goggles in a case hanging from one handle of the ATV. She puts them on, then climbs on the ATV without turning on its headlamp and pulls out of the barn. She stops, climbs off, then locks the barn behind her. Just two of the three locks. She leaves the other one lying on the ground.

It means stay away.

They won't be disturbed.

Guiding the ATV down the narrow track that starts behind the barn and winds through stands of mesquite, Liz follows the turns in her mind's eye, avoiding ditches, low trip wires and strategically placed rocks as if steering a visible obstacle course.

As she navigates each twists and turn, she hears Sam's voice in her head. Just the way he taught her.

The stars have come out by the time she winds down into the folds of a tiny valley, past overhanging rocks and over a spring fed trickle of water that smells so clean and good that Liz slows, listening to the falling water a little way off to her left. 

The cabin is a dark shape beneath the huge overhang of an oak. Liz pulls the ATV under cover of the shed that runs along the back of the cabin and shuts off the engine.

"Red?"

There's no answer.

Liz twists in her seat, not reassured until she hears his voice, rough with pain.

"Are we there?"

"Yes, we're here."

After unlocking the cabin door, she rolls the gurney around the building and up into the darkness of the open living room where she locks the wheels, then hurries back out to the ATV for her clothing and the medicine.

"Can I have that shot now, please, Lizzie?"

In the glow of her little flashlight, Red's face is lined with evident strain.

"Let me get some candles going."

Liz finds candles and matches on the mantle, lights three in a row before turning back to Red, who is looking around with interest. 

The cabin is small and dusty, two chairs by the fireplace, a small kitchen in one corner, a double bed in the other. A ladder of unpeeled logs leads up to a small loft above the kitchen.

"Once this starts working, I'll move you to the bed. You can hop a little, can't you?"

Not looking at Red, Liz digs for syringe and bottle in the satchel.

She sets them on the blanket covering Red's legs, leaning on the one with cast, and starts unstrapping him. She can't lift his entire weight, but Dembe has assured her Red can stand briefly for long enough to help with the transfer from the gurney.

"Before you give me that shot, Lizzie ..." Red pauses, and Liz stops what she's doing and reaches out to touch his bare shoulder.It's chilly, almost clammy.

Her hand on him. On his bare skin.

She wants to snatch it away.

Red moves his arms sideways and out from under the blankets. His ankles are still strapped down.

He makes an awkward gesture.

His right hand splinted. His left arm held straight by the cast on his elbow.

"I'd like a drink of cold water right about now, if I weren't quite so full."

She blinks at him, suddenly realizing that she and Dembe have not, after all, discussed everything that this hasty flight requires. Red really doesn't have proper use of either of his hands.

"This attractive little hideaway does have plumbing, doesn't it?"

The flicker of candlelight casts moving shadows that accentuate the deep lines of pain around Red's mouth, the circles under his eyes. Liz grits her teeth.

"Outhouse."

"Ah."


	4. Upon Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz must care for Red. Progressing into M.

Red lids his eyes and watches Lizzie lighting more candles and setting them around the room.

He's under no illusions about his aging body - it still serves him well, and he's grown comfortable in his own skin.

That skin, however, usually includes several layers of expensive custom tailoring.

Red suspects without having any way to confirm it, although he's unpleasantly aware that he's going to find out soon, that he's currently not wearing anything at all.

Back at the hospital, he threatened to crush the throat of an officious nurse who offered him a sponge bath.

Now Lizzie has put a half million dollars on his credit card, tied him like a parcel to the rack of an ATV, and dragged him into the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Admittedly, to rescue him from almost certain dismemberment and death. 

And she's afraid to look at him. Touch him. Care intimately for him.

Over the years he's built trust, a relationship of sorts with her, but there's a clear line and she's far away on the other side of it. She rarely touches him. At best she's not interested. In his worst moments, he wonders if physically, he disgusts her. 

Agent Elizabeth Keen is trained in violence, she's fascinated by the criminal mind.

His mind, not his killer's body, scarred in the service of his own ruthless will. 

"Are you wishing you had invited Dembe along on this little jaunt?"

Lizzie turns and looks down at him. She is wearing a bedraggled business suit, smudged and stained, although her make-up is perfect - she must have touched it up before that extraordinary performance at the Chevy dealership.

"He needs to find out why this happened, and make it stop" she responds, blowing out another match with her perfectly lipsticked red lips.

Or perhaps she redid her make-up while she was driving.

He blinks once, slowly.

"Lizzie .." he begins.

"I can do this" she says with a wobble in her voice. It's so odd, that wobble, he wants to raise his hand and stop her from saying another word, stop her and think about that wobble, but he's going to feel so much worse if he wets himself in front of her like an infant.

Red tucks the sound away in the recesses of his mind for future consideration.

Liz crosses the room and opens a kitchen cabinet, pulls out a plastic pitcher.

"Will this work?"

Red takes the pitcher clumsily in his broken, splinted hand, almost dropping it, and lets it fall to his lap.

"If you unstrap my legs."

Lizzie moves to to the foot of the gurney and releases the last of the straps, then lifts Red's good ankle and gently moves it to the side, allowing his thighs to fall open. He winces.

"I'm going to slide this under the blanket now, let me know when you're finished."

Lizzie is blushing but trying to act unconcerned. His foolish, foolish girl. It would be so appealing if he wasn't in so much pain.

She lifts up the blanket, then a thin layer of sheet, and tries to position the pitcher without looking underneath.

"Lizzie." 

She raises her eyes to meet his, an almost guilty look on her face.

"Spare me your unnecessary bourgeois modesty and just help me piss."

She flushes, but the anger is enough to carry her through, as he knew it would be.

It feels so good he can almost forget she's staring down at him, his soft belly below the bandages holding his ribs together, the fine white lines of old torture scars from hip to groin, and the strong smell of fresh urine for atmosphere.

"Thank you, Lizzie."

She sets the pitcher aside and covers him. Her hands are shaking slightly.

"I'll just give you that shot now, and make-up the bed," she says, bright red spots emblazoning her cheeks.

After the sting of the shot, he can hear her bustling around, making up the bed where he will sleep alone. He knows without asking she will climb to the loft, she will sleep with her head towards the ladder, listening in case he calls for her, she will tuck her gun under her pillow. She will touch it in her sleep.

Red lies back and waits for the morphine, the waves of relief, the familiar dryness in his mouth.

He replays those moments, the shock of her left hand on him, impersonal. How many times has he imagined her touch?

He would weep, if he were alone.

After she makes up the bed, Liz approaches him carrying a bucket from the kitchen.

"I need to fetch water - I'll be right back."

He blinks at her, not answering, just to irritate her. The morphine is finally hitting him, the ache of all his bruises vanishing as if he is already healed.

"Carry on" he tells her finally, as she stands there waiting. One round to his Lizzie.

Red closes his eyes, just for a moment. When he opens them, she's back and heating water on a camp stove at the hearth.

Two pots, already bubbling from the sound of them.

She carries a bowl of warm soapy water, a cotton hand towel and a pile of larger, mismatched bath towels across the room and sets it on the edge of the gurney, next to the cast on his broken leg.

"I need to wash my hair before I go to sleep tonight," she comments, dipping one end of the towel in the bowl, then wringing it out. "I hate to sleep with dirty hair."

Red looks up at her, tries to express without words how the morphine is swimming like fish in his veins, gives up the effort. He hopes his lips are smiling.

His tired eyes ache despite the candlelight; they are probably dilated.

Liz makes a little sound of exasperation.

Then she strokes his face with the warm wet cloth, washing the top of his head above the bandage, then behind his ears and neck, beneath the line of his jaw. Rubbing the stubble on his face soft and clean.

It feels wonderful.

Red drifts gradually off to sleep as she works her way down to his bare shoulders, lifting one lax arm, then the other, to access the side of his chest and his armpits. His upper back above the bandages, which takes some time. He squints muzzily at her as she carries away the cooling water that smells like blood, starts bathing him again with a hotter, wetter cloth.

It's such a curious feeling. He doesn't have any experience to compare to Lizzie's silent, intent, thorough cleaning of him. If he had to describe it, he'd compare her to a mother cat, cleaning a wayward kitten.

Red can't begin to think about that now.

Lizzie spends a long time on his wrists and fingers, working gently into the crease between each finger.

He smells soapy clean now, which is somehow comforting. Red feels Lizzie starting to roll the covers down toward his waist, but the warmth of the damp cloth swiping over his skin is too much for him.

He blinks rapidly as Lizzie's beloved face swims in the flickering glow of the candles, then he's asleep.

He wakes up as she rolls the gurney to the side of the double bed just a few feet away, then lowers it with a weary sigh. She lifts off the blanket and folds it at the foot of the bed. He is still covered by sheets, which are damp and cling to him.

"Can you help me by moving over?"

Red is perfectly pleased to help - he tries to roll over in the direction of the bed, but is prevented from moving by the heavy cast on his leg.

How could he have forgotten his injuries?

"Lift up and slide" Lizzie orders him, and Red inches sideways, mostly under his own power as she tugs at him, until a soft mattress cradles him, infinitely more comfortable than the gurney.

As Lizzie pulls the heavy flannel covers up to his chin and tucks him naked into bed, Red realizes he feels clean all over - not stiff with blood or other bodily fluids, not dry or itchy or anything but perfectly relaxed.

Exactly how much of him had she bathed while he was unconscious?

Red is still contemplating this interesting topic, and whether perhaps this might be sufficient grounds for reciprocity, when he slips away deep into sleep.


	5. A Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which words are exchanged

Liz wakes just after dawn, her hand reaching under her pillow for her weapon before she opens her eyes.

The cabin is dark and still.

They're still alive. They're safe.

Relaxing, she rolls onto her back and snuggles down into her covers - a sheet folded between two worn cotton sleeping bags.

The Suburban will be long gone; there will be an old four wheel drive Tahoe in its place in the barn, sitting next to a different green ATV. 

There's nothing to connect this place to her. 

She's fiercely glad she never told Tom.

Her promise to Sam had included keeping his carefully prepared refuges secret from anyone but family.

Red isn't family; he's something wholly different. 

Liz thinks about her hands on his body the previous night, how after he slept she had followed each stroke of the warm washcloth with the bare fingers of her other hand before she dried him. How there is no intimate part of Red she hasn't seen, touched. Stored away in memory.

As if the love in her fingers could heal him.

"Lizzie?"

His voice sounds hoarse, but not concerned.

"Coming."

Liz rips off tags and stickers and pulls a new Gap sweatshirt over her ribbed cotton tank. She climbs down the ladder from the loft with her holster hanging loosely off one shoulder.

"I'm thirsty."

Right. Dembe pulled out the IV.

Drawing open the square kitchen window curtain for light, Liz collects a glass from the kitchen cupboard and pours a water from the stoneware jug she filled from the spring before bed. The water drains slowly through the filtered spout, giving her time to realize she hasn't got straws.

There's plastic tubing in the cached supplies, but Red's thirsty now.

"Here."

Liz sits down on the edge of the bed beside Red's head and helps prop him up on his pillows, then slides one arm behind them for further height. As she holds the glass to his lips, tilting it further as he drinks, she wishes she had taken the time to put on a bra. His face is practically pressed to her breasts.

Liz shivers at the intensity of the image; beard stubble brushing her tender nipples. She's so sensitive there, the line between exquisite pleasure and unwelcome pain varying without warning.

Red lifts his mouth from the glass and she withdraws her arm, lowering his head down as he blinks sleepily.

"It appears that our escape was successful" he pronounces, his eyes darting around the dim room as if there might be something more, something new to see. It's just what she herself was thinking, but he says it as if only his words make it true. Red can be so randomly officious.

It was really her escape, with him along for the ride.

"Are you ready for...?"

Liz gestures towards the pitcher which sits ready on the side table. She emptied it and rinsed it the night before. The towels she used to wash him are hanging on a clothesline out back, concealed by one of the huge, spreading oaks.

"In a bit, Lizzie, in a bit."

His arms move awkwardly beneath the covers, drawing her attention to the silhouette of his body, her eyes finding the truly impressive rise of the bedclothes for only a second before it is concealed by his broken hand.

She ought to go outside, give him some time alone, although his hand is a mess and his other arm is immobilized in its cast.

She's been standing by the bed for too long.

Red looks up at her, catching her watching, and her senses snap to high alert.

There's suddenly a cruel turn to his mouth; he's irritated. Or furious. Or something else, something almost vicious.

"I don't suppose you'd care to give me a hand here, what with how much you enjoy playing nurse?"

"Doctor" she snaps back at him.

Their eyes hold for a long minute.

Liz feels her chin set stubbornly. She is not going to babble at Red about how much she wants him, wants to pull back the covers and put her mouth on him.

They're going to be alone together here for weeks. And he's completely dependent on her. Liz can't leave if he rejects her, pities her. 

Worst of all, if he allows her certain liberties just because he's such a ruthless pragmatist. She can't bear to lose her easy give and take with him, his underlying trust.

Dembe had been in complete agreement with her plan, but Red could have stopped it all with the lift of one manicured finger.

The lines around Red's mouth deepen. She's staring again. 

She really needs coffee.

Red needs pain medication. And apparently, a fight.

"You can't have everything you want, all the time," Liz tells him. Partly because it's true, partly because she knows how much truisms irritate him. If he wants a fight, she's willing to give it to him. Anything but this horrible, hopeless wanting. "I'm not one of your prostitutes."

She's referencing the Chinese deal gone south that started this whole mess. Some of the false identities Red had provided to move more than 100 high-end prostitutes, including passports, had failed to pass US Customs. Liz isn't too pleased with Red's involvement in this particular type of criminal enterprise.

Red's face goes very, very still.

What did he think that she meant?

"I believe you're the one with most experience with prostitutes - you know, people paid to sleep with you?"

His tone is light and jocular, and it takes moment for the words to truly register.

Tom. He's talking about Tom.

It hurts so much she sways, her breath leaving her body. 

He tilts his head a little, assessing the damage. The back of her analyst's brain notes it as interesting how menacing Red can look, lying flat on his back.

Liz grits her teeth, unable to think of anything to say that is worthy of his last remark.

Red raises one brow, then his features dissolve into familiar irony.

"Excellent, Lizzie, I do believe I'm ready for the pitcher now."

"Excellent" she says, hardening her voice with an effort. 

Once he's done, she's going to give him an extra-big shot of morphine and drink an entire pot of coffee.

And try to figure out how to act normal around this infuriating man who Liz wants to make love to in every possible way, and also, at this particular moment, not speak to for at least the rest of the day. Maybe the week.


	6. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red and Liz, after the fight.

Tom used to give her the silent treatment. As soon as Red awakens, he realizes that's the last thing he can afford to do. His Lizzie has many excellent qualities, but she can and does hold grudges. Red is absolutely not going to allow this to solidify into a pattern for them.

He's already slept away the morning.

"Lizzie, come over here. I need your help."

She can't refuse that request.

Liz comes to stand at the foot of his bed, not the side. She's wearing new blue jeans without a belt, with a sleeveless white tee shirt tucked loosely at the waist, and heavy leather work gloves. She's been cutting and hauling firewood with her hair caught up in a high ponytail that bobs as she walks.

Red lifts his head, then winces. His back and neck were both wrenched in the accident, and there's been no time for more than x-rays to confirm the lack of broken bones. He probably needs acupuncture, chiropractic, and physical therapy.

"Yes?"

Her tone is calm, neutral. Attentive, yet uninterested.

She's wearing red lipstick again, and mascara. The inner edges of her eyes are faintly red.

"This situation ... is very difficult for me." 

He holds her gaze with his own, effortlessly. At least she's not looking away.

"You have treated me with nothing but dignity and respect, Lizzie. Unlike your colleagues during my detention, I'm sorry to say."

She flinches at that, confirming she's read the inevitable reports. She knows he can do docile, if that's what a situation requires. Red spares just a flicker of a thought for the hope that she has not also watched the tapes.

No matter. His prior humiliation is irrelevant. Red presses on.

"I'm going to need your assistance for weeks, for bathing, toileting. For something as simple as scratching an itch."

Her hands twitch at that - he can see the fingers of the heavy gloves move.

"You're going to be holding my drinks for me, feeding me, wiping me up like a child."

Her blue eyes widen. 

"Lizzie, you don't need me at all right now, but I need you."

He tilts his head, giving her a smile with as much charm as he can muster, given that his gut is telling him that he doesn't have much time before they urgently need to find him some alternative to that outhouse down the hill. He can see her fighting not to smile back.

"I have very little experience with being mothered." Red doesn't talk about his childhood. Not ever. "Unfortunately, that's what this broken body needs right now."

Liz licks her lips, then shifts from one foot to another, her frown softening.

"Truce?"

He offers the word as her eyes run up and down his prone form, as if she's reminding herself just how injured he is. 

"Pax."

Liz pulls off her gloves. She lifts and straightens his covers, which have become crumpled and are trying to slide off one side of the bed. His feet are sticking out at the bottom.

"Would you like some coffee?"

Red wants the coffee, but right now it would be a very bad, bad idea.

"Actually, about that outhouse..?"

Liz gives him a nod.

"I have a plan for that" she responds, giving his feet a little squeeze after tucking the covers around them. "It's out in the shop; give me a minute to haul it in."

Red lies back on his pillows, taking stock of his pain level, which is already beginning to rise. He needs to switch to tablets soon. He's sleeping too much, which means too many dreams.

Red counts himself lucky that he didn't wake Lizzie once during the night. He doesn't talk in his sleep very often, but when he does, he's been told that he swears. Almost continuously.

He knows who he sounds like at those times.

"I built this for you."

Liz carries in a rough frame built of unpeeled cedar fence posts, her toned biceps bunching as she carries it in front of her like a chair. 

She plunks it down next to the bed. Red lifts his head and turns it slightly to the side.

"The bucket goes under here" Liz points, lifting it with one hand and sliding a tall plastic bucket into place. "I put sawdust in it, so it will be easy to clean."

"Ingenious" responds Red, not at all confident that it will hold his weight. And how is he going to balance, with one leg in a cast?

"I'm ready when you are," says Lizzie, collecting a white roll of toilet paper from the bench by the front door.

She sets it on the floor next to the frame with the bucket.

He's really going to do this.

"Help me sit up first - I'm going to be dizzy," Red advises her, thinking through the mechanics even as Lizzie starts gently shifting him into a sitting position on the bed. She moves his broken leg by degrees, lifting the weight of the cast for him.

She's been trying to keep a layer of sheet over his groin as she moves him. He brushes her hands away.

"Don't bother fussing with that. I have no body modesty, Lizzie."

Like hell he doesn't. If Red could do this drunk, he'd drink until he vomits, then keep on drinking. 

But like most things in life, shame is only a weakness if someone else knows about it.

Red stands on one foot, his broken ribs protesting, then pivots down onto the makeshift seat as Lizzie helps him balance.

"This may be a while."

He doesn't think so, but he can't be sure. 

"It's going to be okay" says Lizzie in a comforting voice. She strokes his upper arms, grasps them to help him balance, then presses their foreheads together for a moment. "You'll be done soon, and I'll make a fresh pot of coffee, and eggs, and cinnamon pancakes, with honey because I can't find the syrup yet ...."

The talking helps. 

Red wants to tell her she'll make a good mother, but he doesn't. Even if she doesn't understand what he wants from her now, he needs to believe that some day she'll know, someday she'll remember his words.

Red can promise Lizzie forever. 

But children? They live, if they survive, into the unknown future, decades after their parents are gone and can't protect them. 

Red told her he's never lied to her. He's not about to start now.


	7. Improvements, Slowly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red and Liz find ways to cohabit

The next two weeks are calm.

Liz establishes a routine; she wakes early and makes her coffee and sits alone on the porch to plan her day.

If this were the permanent retreat from some personal or societal catastrophe for which this particular refuge was designed, she'd be planting gardens, setting up the windmill, starting an complete inventory of the supplies packed away into the storage rooms drilled deep in the rock face that rises behind the cabin. The place she called 'Aladdin's Cave' when she was a child.

Instead, she thinks about food, and laundry, and books.

She and Red have come to some basic agreements about hygiene and other personal care tasks. They can even joke now as she cares for him in the motherly way he requested. Liz falls gratefully into that role whenever possible - it noticeably reduces the frightening tension that sometimes animates Red's gestures and roughens his normally urbane voice.

To recover his strength, Red needs to stand and move regularly, no matter how much it hurts. He doesn't always appreciate her reminders. She sometimes shakes one finger at him in mock reproof, and that usually makes him laugh.

At least once a day, Liz massages Red's arms and legs with lotion. He still can't lie on his stomach, so she can't do much for his back unless he's sitting up. The texture of his healed burns, once so intimidating, is now familiar, just another detail about Red that Liz has memorized. She's come to expect the way his breath smells in the morning, the spot on his neck that itches, the way he flinches when she trims his toenails. The Concierge of Crime has ticklish feet.

Today they are starting to read a new book. 

To allow more time for that, Liz promises herself she'll wash the waiting pile of sheets tomorrow. Red sweats at night from the pain medicine, so she changes his bed daily. She woke early to set bread dough rising, so for lunch she can bake and serve that with heated, canned beef and vegetable soup.

She's never tried to play housewife before; she knows how to perform these tasks, but she'd just as soon hire someone to do them for her. 

Taking a sip of her coffee, Liz acknowledges that it's one more way she and Red are more alike that she ever knew. 

They enjoy the same card games, they read the same novelists. They sometimes argue about food, but more about preferences. He likes expensive, complicated, highly spiced dishes, but she doesn't have any of those ingredients here. Despite the level of description he can offer for his favorite foods, Red will eat whatever she cooks from the available canned, dried and powdered supplies, and she's never been fussy about nutrition.

She would probably skip half her meals, the way she does when she's working on a case, if he didn't stop and wait for her to take a plate and eat along with him.

Neither of them like to eat alone.

"Lizzie?"

He's awake and ready for help to get out of bed. Liz looks up at the angle of the rising sun.

Early. He must be looking forward to the new book as well. They have developed a very domestic habit of reading aloud to each other, alternating chapters, and then talking about they are reading. Sam stocked the cabin with classic novels, nothing new or political, and lots and lots of reference books of all types. Only a few histories, like Thucydides - she and Red both enjoy contemporary history and bemoan the lack of choices.

Liz can listen to his mellifluous voice forever.

Red seems to enjoy her take on the books they select as well; he just reads, but she adds in voices for the characters, sometimes even stands and acts out parts as she reads to him.

"I'll be right in," she calls back.

Red smiles more and more every day, as if some knot she never realized was there in him, in every action, in every word, is coming untied.

Liz swallows her coffee and enters the cabin. As usual, Red is trying and failing to prop himself up on his pillows without assistance.

"Laundry day?" he asks her as she steps to his side and helps him sit up against the wall. She rolls one of the pillows and stuffs it in the small of his back.

"No, I'll wait until tomorrow. It's overcast, and I don't want to risk rain."

Once he's positioned, she folds down the covers, spreads his bare thighs slightly, and helps him with the pitcher.

Since she's started drinking her morning coffee on the porch, Red never has trouble in the morning, even though his broken hand is far from healed, but sometimes at night he can't manage, sending her away and then waking her later to fetch the pitcher again. 

Red has such an appetite for life, it makes sense that his sexual appetite is equally voracious. Somehow though, she'd never imagined him struggling with unwanted desire, all buttoned away under those three piece suits. She obviously has a seriously impoverished imagination.

On nights when he has more than one drink, which mixed with the pain pills guarantees him a better, sounder night's sleep, Liz climbs to her lonely bed in the loft and brings herself to climax after bitter climax thinking about the hard heavy curve of him, glimpsed only in passing before he motions her away. She imagines running her fingernails delicately up the underside, across to the sensitive flesh at his hips, and harder down the top of his thighs.

Liz swallows hard and brings her mind back where it belongs.

"I'd like to work on the ham radio today" suggests Red in a hopeful tone. "Just test it out, clean it, get it working."

Liz gives a decisive shake of her head.

"Dembe said six to eight weeks, at least - you need to be well, or at least not visibly wounded, when you return."

"You mean, when you return me."

Liz lifts hot coffee to Red's lips and watches carefully as he sips at it. She's been tracking his fluid intake to be sure he doesn't get constipated again.

"There's nothing you can do in this condition except put everyone around you at risk."

He purses his lips briefly, as if tasting something sour. This is a familiar conversation for them, which goes round and round without an answer. Liz tries something new.

"What went wrong with those passports, Red?"

It's daring for her to ask him questions about his business, even more so about his all but suicidal mistake. If that's what it was.

"More coffee, Lizzie?" 

Red's tone is encouraging; she refills his mug and then her own from the enameled coffee pot on the camp stove and hurries back to his side, seating herself on the bed with a nudge of her hip against his as she gets comfortable.

The story unfolds between sips of coffee.

"More than a hundred young women bound for new homes in the United States and Canada - what could go wrong?"

He takes a sip and she smiles at him, lifting her own mug to take a slow drink. Not wanting anything she says to break the spell.

"The first of them were actually in transit, on a Qantas flight, if I remember correctly, when I learned that I had been lied to."

Liz can't help but give him a look that clearly says, 'A criminal lied to you? Are you really so shocked?'

His return look is severe. She resorts to her coffee once more.

"Some, not all, but a fair number of these women, they were not women."

Red's mouth twists again. He's looking forward into nothing as though in his mind's eye, he's looking at something particularly disgusting.

"Children, they were just children, not 18, not 19 years old. The youngest of them, I believe, was barely 12."

"Ooooh." Lizzie can't help but make a sound. The bureau's most wanted, the smugglers who traffic in children.

Red shrugs.

"Very expensive merchandise in some very particular markets. Not a business that I condone, mind you, or take part in. One can't help but hear things. Know things."

"And so you burned all their identities? Deliberately?"

Red tilts his head to the side, astonishment in his tone.

"Why no, Lizzie, only the young ones."

She takes a larger sip of her cooling coffee; she can tell he's thinking the better of this conversation, the moment slipping away.

"He told me they were all adults," says Red with finality. "I don't buy and sell children. And I don't assist anyone who does."

Liz reaches forward and touches the curve of his bare shoulder. She cups her bare hand, warm from her coffee mug, against his pale, lightly freckled skin, the feel of his skin as familiar as her own.

"I know you wouldn't, Red" she says earnestly, trying and failing to keep her heart in check. She knows that she sounds like a fool.

He could have died.

Oh, how she loves this man.


	8. Descent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little fluff, then another fight.

After four weeks, Red learns something new about himself.

The one thing he longs for, more than anything else, is the sound of another man's voice.

For so many years he has asserted that he has no friends, that he's a loner who needs no one. He's certainly survived enough time in various types of solitary confinement, endured enough episodes of torture where he's been alone in his own mind as his suffering body screams and bleeds. 

He still believes that his true home, where he is most himself, is at the helm of a singlehand sailboat out on the open ocean.

Red would never have imagined that being alone with a woman he adores, even given the highly unsatisfactory state of their current relationship, could become so difficult. She touches him so intimately, so fondly, with no hint that she's conscious of him as a man. Of herself as a woman.

Red loves to flirt with women of all ages, debate with them, learn from them.

But it turns out there are things he can say to another man, even a stranger, that he can't say to Lizzie. They slide right past her, or she shakes her head and laughs. 

He's taken the company of men for granted. He won't do so in future.

"Red?"

Lizzie's knocking at the cabin door, wanting to refill her coffee mug.

He should have finished by now, but he started thinking about his favorite onsen, how he sat around and laughed with a group of highly educated yakuza, how they ate and drank and joked clumsily together. The hot spring water, perfect meal, and night-long drunken conversation still sticks in his mind as one of his favorite memories of Japan. 

Red gives up and tosses the unused damp cloth from his belly to the floor.

He and Lizzie even have a system for this. Morning and evening she leaves a clean damp cloth on the bedside table, and he tosses it to the floor after he cleans himself up.

"Come on in" he calls to her, trying to push himself up on his elbows toward the wall. Red can feel his muscles atrophying the longer he lies in bed. At least he can get around the cabin with crutches now, but he hasn't attempted the rocky landscape past the porch.

Lizzie comes in smiling, swinging her empty coffee cup in one hand.

Her hair is knotted up on her head with a torn strip of bandanna and loose strands fall over her forehead. She's wearing a blue tee shirt and jeans and white crew socks without shoes.

"So, what are we doing today?" Red asks her as she sets down her cup and comes to his side to help him sit up. She folds down the covers, then holds the pitcher at the perfect angle, her small hand gathering him up as matter-of-factly as she would shake hands with a stranger. He looks up at the ceiling, concentrates.

"You need to drink more water" she tells him, scrutinizing the color of the fluid as she sets the pitcher aside, then pulls the covers back up over his lap. Her nails brush his bare belly as she folds the covers over neatly, then tucks them under his hips. She smells like fresh air and Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap.

If he leans forward he can press his lips to her hair. He doesn't move.

Coffee next. Red vows to himself that some morning he's going to wake up early enough to have coffee with Lizzie on the porch.

He's almost done with the pain pills - he doesn't need them for pain anymore, but they do help him sleep.

She always wakes up before Red does.

"Shall we drink tonight, to celebrate four glorious weeks together?" he suggests.

They always discuss in advance whether they will drink one of the irreplaceable few bottles of liquor Lizzie has managed to locate in the tightly packed storage rooms. Looking forward to the drinks all day is an important part of the ritual.

When they drink together, they play games from the chest that serves as a table between the two chairs in front of the fireplace. They have well-worn sets of all the old standards, in addition to cards - chess, checkers, cribbage.

They can't play sober, because Red always wins. Lizzie can tell if he's letting her win, but he's not sure how. It's a delightful puzzle, so he doesn't think about it often, savoring the uncertainty, trusting that the answer will come to him in time.

Lizzie refuses to play Monopoly with him anymore; he can't help cheating so outrageously that it infuriates her, especially since she can't ever catch him at it.

Red loves her outrage, the flash of her eyes, the way she sometimes comes out with the perfect insult, as if she's been thinking one up all day and just waiting for the right opportunity to use it. He's happy to hand her that opportunity, to bask momentarily in the little girl quality of her smile.

"Drinks it is" Lizzie responds, bringing him coffee and sitting on the side of the bed to hold it while he sips. She won't let him take the splints off his fingers yet, even though they merely ache instead of shooting pains clear up his arm. "I've made cinnamon rolls - I guess yeast can live forever."

The rolls smell fantastic. Red is fairly certain he's gaining weight, although without clothing or a mirror it's difficult to be certain. Food is such a simple, dependable pleasure. He'll get back to his customary routines after he's healed. When life gets back to normal.

Lizzie on the other hand is losing weight and gaining muscle mass daily - it takes hours of physical exertion to maintain their low-tech life.

"I'll be in and out most of the day - big laundry" she tells him, fetching him a second cup of coffee and a huge, snail shaped roll which oozes butter, sugar and pecans. Liz places the plate on her lap and cuts it into bite sized pieces, then feeds them to Red one by one, interspersed with sips of coffee.

"Then I'll get our bottle - do you want vodka this time?"

Red chews and swallows.

"I'd prefer to stick with the whiskey, until you have a yearning to try something different?"

Liz grins, gestures toward him with the fork, and then eats the last bite of his cinnamon roll despite his open waiting mouth.

He closes it with a glare.

"No, I like the whiskey better too," she concurs.

Red heaves a deliberately pained sigh.

"You can have another cinnamon roll, if you want" she offers, still grinning at him, the empty plate on her lap with his coffee mug balanced on top of it.

"Go do your laundry," Red dismisses her with a lift of his broken hand, the closest he can come to a wave. "If you can just prop up Pye for me before you go?"

He's been reading about wood carving, not that he can actually attempt it until he gets the cast off his elbow. 

Liz fetches the book and sets it on his thighs with a pillow behind it, at the perfect distance for him to turn the pages.

"Your laundry" she comments, as she carries the dishes to the counter. She'll heat water next to wash them, use it to wipe his lips with a hot washcloth before she soaks their cups and plates.

Red looks down at the book. Drinks tonight. He'll skip his afternoon pain pills, stretch them out another day.

***

Lizzie has placed fresh candles on the fireplace mantel once again, lighting them before setting out the chessboard. She spreads a clean cotton blanket on the seat of one chair, and helps Red lower himself off his crutches to sit with a little grunt. His ribs are taking much longer than they should to heal.

"Here you go."

She wraps the first blanket around his waist, then a second blanket around his shoulders for warmth, even though he's still wearing a thin sheet tied toga-style at his left shoulder because he's been crutching back and forth on the porch for exercise.

The sheet doesn't provide much coverage, but it's better than nothing. 

Liz pours them each a generous glass of whiskey, seats herself opposite him, and reaches over to hold the glass to his mouth.

Firelight flickers on the chess pieces.

He lifts his broken hand and gently nudges a pawn forward.

Lizzie drinks, then smiles down into the amber liquid without speaking. He feels the tension start to drop away from her tired shoulders as if they were his own.

God, he hates being so helpless. 

They each take a sip every move. Lizzie soon refills their glasses, once, twice, a third time.

Red leans forward to try and take a bigger drink, and the blanket on his shoulders slides off. The third time this evening. 

"Are you absolutely certain you can't locate any of your father's clothing in the storage room?" he questions Liz once again.

"There are more than two hundred wooden crates in there" she reminds him, sliding her bishop back across the board in response to his attack. "I can't pry them all open - it takes too much time."

Red knows the crate with the whiskey took her almost twenty minutes. In this particular moment, that doesn't seem important.

"I fail to understand why Dembe didn't procure me some clothing" he says peevishly. The whiskey must be hitting him fast; he tries not to talk about the outside world. If he starts thinking, worrying about what's going on out there, he'll be awake all night, no matter how many pills he takes.

He moves his rook, just one space.

"Oh, he asked me to get you a sweatsuit at Gap" returns Liz in an absent tone of voice. "It's in a bag upstairs."

Red's vision blurs. The rage that pours through him so briefly is unbearable; he locks it down to cold fury with a flick of his will.

"I've been lolling about naked for weeks when you have clothes that fit me upstairs?"

Liz looks across the chess board at him, her blue eyes wide, growing wider.

"Does it amuse you to see me like this?"

"Red, they're sweats, I'd have to cut them up to get them over your casts."

"Is this your idea of entertainment, playing Advanced Interrogation 101 with me just because you can?"

He draws a deep breath, wishing for more whiskey. Liz is clutching her drink to her mouth now, as if she's using the rim of the glass to hold back some response.

"Are you writing little stories about me in your head to tell your friends back at the bureau?"

"Red, you need those clothes for when we leave." 

Her low voice shakes even as she glares back at him.

"I suppose I should have known you like your men in skirts?" His tone is idle, malicious.

Liz goes white, only high spots of color at her cheekbones remaining.

"How, how did you know that Tom ...?"

He doesn't care, he's suddenly so sick of everything about this situation. How could she ever think that was her decision to make?

"How amusing, how pathetic, I never imagined violation to be your favorite flavor ... " he goes on, glaring down at the drink sitting in front of him, allowing acid to etch every word. 

"Well, it's over and done with, I've already seen and done it all" Liz responds angrily. She pours all the whiskey in her glass down her throat, then refills it from the bottle, which is almost empty. "So you might as well get over yourself, Red. It's no big thrill for me."

Red sneers, actually sneers at her. It feels good, watching her draw back in her chair, as if she has any chance of escaping his words.

"Not quite everything - you've been a little squeamish about one particular body function, haven't you, dear Lizzie?"

Red moves his broken hand to his crotch, shaking it up and down in an unmistakable gesture. "Maybe tonight you want to get that out of the way, too?"

Liz jumps to her feet, jolting the chess pieces out of place. One of them falls to the floor and snaps. The king. How wonderfully symbolic.

Red stares up at Lizzie. Her face is expressionless, her eyes are as cold as his.

He spent an entire afternoon last week, teaching her to iron out her tells. She was getting better, when she remembered to use what he taught her. When she didn't forget and giggle.

His eyes are wet. How did that happen?

"You can sleep in that chair tonight for all I care." 

Liz stomps to the front door and double checks the bolt, then begins blowing out all the candles. He looks down at his glass. If he leans forward enough to sip out of it, he's likely to end up on the floor.

His bladder aches, beyond full. Red lays his head back for a moment, blinking hard.

It's dark in the cabin now, and he can hear when she reaches the ladder to the loft, slips and bangs her knee as she climbs, hangs there with a little sob, swearing under her breath.

"Please. Lizzie. Please."

Silence.

"Please, please, put me to bed."

His impossible, damnable vanity. 

Red's always imagined that someday he would undress Lizzie slowly, delicately, so that the very act of exposing her to his eyes would be erotic for her. In these elaborate fantasies, he's always imagined himself in an expensive suit, or a tuxedo, peeling her out of a bright red dress, complicated lacy undergarments, sheer stockings that cling to her silky thighs. He's imagined standing over her, fully clothed, as she spreads her legs wide for him. Begs for him.

Gone, all gone. 

He's broken, and he breaks everything he touches.

"Please. Lizzie."

He doesn't care what she can hear in his voice. His bare feet are cold. In a moment he's going to try and get that drink in his mouth, even if he re-breaks his ribs or his aching hand, every finger shaking in the splints.

"Please. Lizzie, please."

Steps on the ladder. She's coming back.

Tears spill down his cheeks. He brushes them away with his forearm.

Liz lifts the drink to his mouth, feeling for his lips in the dark with her free hand, holds it carefully until he gulps down every drop.

"You hurt me so much, Red."

The killing thrust, right under his guard. He deserves that and more, doesn't he? How could he have forgotten that?

She collects his crutches, helps him to bed without relighting any candles. She lifts the toga over his head and folds it away as he stands at the bedside, helps him to sit and then lie down. In silence, she arranges him in his usual position, with pillows cradling his head. More beneath his casts. Liz holds the pitcher for him by feel, not spilling a drop. 

She doesn't wish him goodnight.

Red lies alone in the dark, warm covers tucked neatly up to his neck and tightly under his feet, and tries not to think at all.


	9. The Next Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the fight

Two more weeks of this, at least. Maybe four.

Liz pulls on an extra layer, a gray cotton thermal shirt, and takes her coffee out on the porch.

It's another gray day - she needs to get a fire going in the fireplace soon.

Closing her eyes, she listens to the faint sound of falling water against the rocks as it spills away from the spring.

Red's voice last night, begging for her help in the darkness. She's never heard him sound like that before. 

Defeated.

Liz never wants to hear that tone again. Any more than she can bear another fight. She almost broke down and cried in front of him, and if she cries hard enough, she'll blurt out what she's feeling like a pathetic teenager.

Damn him for how he makes her feel.

Liz catalogs his faults silently as she nurses her coffee.

Red is arrogant as hell, cocky, self-satisfied. Pretentious, vain, and ruthless with everyone around him, including himself. So far beyond competitive she doesn't even think there's an adequate word for it in the English language.

That's the man she first came to know, fedora tilted to one side, an expression of cool interest in his eyes. They regularly used to hang up on each other, just to make a point.

This private Red is less polished, more vulnerable, strangely companionable. Much less consistent. Much more playful. Still with that rich rumble of a voice that makes her want to press her ear to his broad chest as he speaks.

Perfect except that he doesn't seem to react to her as a woman at all. Liz knows he likes women. She's probably too young for him. He's taken great care to set her at arm's length.

But they can't go back to Agent Keen and Raymond Reddington.

She'll always be able to picture every detail of his big body in her mind's eye, even if she never again sees more of Red than a narrow triangle of skin at the throat of an open shirt. 

She has to make a choice now, before he awakens.

Can she find a way back to Liz and Red?

Her cup empty, she stares down into it, marshaling her forces.

Most days have been so good. Even this morning, hurt as she is, Liz notices that she's still storing up details to share with him, questions to ask him, stories to recount. 

She wants him to wake up so she can describe the circling hawk, ask him about the chess gambit, tell him about the first time she tried to cook a flaming dessert.

Oh god, she loves him.

He'll never, ever want her if she fawns on him. 

It doesn't take much to profile Red's romantic style. She's heard enough of his stories by now. He likes control, he likes to initiate, he probably likes to watch, to hold something back. But he absolutely loves it when women reflect those qualities back at him; he's willing to submit, to receive, to tune his own actions to the fever pitch of their desire.

Liz swallows hard.

It's not as if he's perfect. On the rare occasions when Red swears loudly and continuously in his sleep, there's an escalating, rising note that resonates for her as abuse. Like pressure boiling over, then quickly contained. 

"Lizzie? Are you awake?"

He's calling and she needs to dismiss her scattered thoughts. She needs to make a choice and act on it.

Liz goes in and crosses the room to the bed, leaving the front door slightly ajar, like an escape route. A cool breeze follows her into the room, dissipating the stale smell of whiskey and smoke from yesterday's fire.

"I'm here, Red."

He hasn't touched the washcloth she slipped onto the end table, and he's still lying flat in bed.

"Aspirin?" Red opens his eyes a little and squints at her. His chin is dark with stubble and his lips are dry and cracked.

Liz placed a glass of water and four tablets on the side table as soon as she came downstairs.

She runs one arm behind his head, drops the tablets into his open mouth, lifts the glass of water and waits patiently as he slowly drinks the whole glass down.

"My head hurts," says Red softly, as she gently helps him settle back onto the pillow. He glances at her out of the corner of his slitted eyes, then looks away.

"We both had too much to drink last night" says Liz in a calm voice. "I'm sorry we had a fight. Will you forgive me, Red?"

"A fight?" His voice sounds odd. "Forgive you, Lizzie?"

She sits down on the side of the bed, puts her palms on the blanket which covers his chest, the tips of her fingers curving over his collarbone. She rubs gently, her fingers remembering the sore, tight places, sliding up to the tight muscles at the top of his shoulders.

Forgive me, she tries to say with her touch. Forgive yourself.

His eyes are open now, crusty at the corners. 

"You're right about the sweat suit, you're right to be angry when I don't give you choices." She keeps her voice calm.

His eyes search her face, then slide away. Whatever he's looking for, he's clearly not finding it. Liz doesn't know if that's a good or a bad thing.

She tries again.

"I'm already doing all the work here, Red. If you aren't willing to trust me, I don't know what else I can offer, to get you to forgive me. To get back to the way we were."

Red pulls his broken hand from under the covers, lays it lightly over her hand. She turns up her palm, feels his fingers trace her scar.

"Do you remember when I told you, I'm never telling you everything?" He clears his throat, gives a little cough.

Liz nods, staring down at their joined hands.

"There's nothing to forgive. No reason to change anything we're doing." He's looking at their hands too, and his low voice is smooth and warm now, as if nothing had happened the night before. "Let's just focus on the future, Lizzie."

"It's only a few more weeks" she responds. He's right, nothing actually happened.

Except maybe her heart cracked open, just a little.

Liz jumps to her feet, aware that she's fleeing, even if it's just across the room.

"I'll fetch you some coffee. I'm behind on cooking breakfast."

She can still feel Red's fingertips on her palm. Everything will be fine now. It has to be.


	10. Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red and Lizzie's time in hiding draws to a close

They don't drink together for almost a week, and when they do, Liz mixes vodka with powered orange drink for herself and monitors her intake carefully, letting Red finish most of the bottle.

To her great relief, it's a happy evening. She likes it when he sings.

In addition to reading aloud, they're trying something new every day. Red teaches her useful phrases in a number of languages, with a focus on vocabulary dealing with food and weaponry. They speak only pig Latin one day; she refuses to attempt Esperanto.

Red follows her about on his crutches until he tires.

He's been so excited about working on the ham radio, but Liz staunchly refuses to set it up until the afternoon of the last day of the sixth week.

They've agreed not to cut off Red's casts until after the call, in case they can't reach Dembe. 

He answers at once.

"Don't come back for two more weeks."

"Why not?" Red leans forward, pulling the old table microphone towards him. 

"I've planted evidence that you are in Hong Kong, heading in his direction, to keep him rattled." Dembe explains. "You can't re-appear until I complete my last attack. I'm still picking up stock options. And recruiting."

Liz shakes her head in dismay. Red has assured her that a helicopter could easily reach them before nightfall. But Dembe won't send one unless he can guarantee Red's safety.

"One more thing?" says Red, giving Liz an apologetic glance. He starts speaking another language, and Dembe responds the same way, their conversation flowing melodically back and forth for several minutes.

Liz taps her wrist. It's unlikely anyone is scanning the area for them at this late date, but all contact carries some risk. The longer they talk, the more the risk.

Two more weeks. She hopes Dembe has Red's clothes waiting.

***

That night, Liz carefully removes the splint from Red's hand, then cuts the cast off his elbow, revealing a thin pale limb, muscles stiff with disuse. It takes three bowls of warm water for her to scrub off the unwashed grime of the last six weeks. She carefully re-wraps his stiff ribs as he sits upright in his chair by the fire, twisting and turning his arm. Examining the damage.

After some argument, they're leaving the leg cast on for at least one more week, maybe even until the helicopter arrives. Or course, if Dembe's attack hasn't succeeded by then, perhaps he'll need to join them in hiding here instead.

"I have a surprise for you, Red" says Liz, holding the plastic bag she's retrieved from the loft behind her back. He grins at her encouragingly, tilting his head. The firelight gleams softly on the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms, toned by the crutches. His lower body is wrapped in blankets that fall in shadowy folds to the tops of his bare feet.

"Yes, Lizzie? Keeping secrets from me yet again?"

In the last two weeks she's been trying to surprise him at meal time, promising him one thing for dinner and then providing additional side dishes, garnishes or desserts.

He probably expects a second dessert, like the lopsided cookies she baked outside in a makeshift solar oven two days ago.

She pulls her surprise from the bag with a flourish and holds it up.

A big loose green tee shirt, long-sleeved, with a pocket.

Red's mouth moves but he doesn't say anything. 

Liz shakes it out and approaches. He bends his head just a little and she threads it carefully over his head and ears, then helps him gingerly pull his arms through the sleeves.

He leans forward in his chair and she smooths the shirt down his back, pulling it tight so it doesn't wrinkle. He's tugging at the front already, where it's riding up above his belly.

She steps back and watches as he pulls it down to hang well below his waist.

It's an extra extra large - she was afraid it would shrink in the wash.

Red touches the hem, rubs the fabric between his fingers.

"It's a good color on you" she ventures, after a few moments of silence.

Red gives a little shake of his head.

"Lizzie."

He holds out his arms.

Liz goes to him, hugs him tenderly, trying to avoid his ribs. His arms wrap cautiously around her; he doesn't squeeze, but for a long moment he doesn't let her go.

It hasn't really registered for her until this moment that one of the many things Red has not been able to do for six weeks is give and receive hugs. She can feel his face press into her hair, then he releases her.

"My endless gratitude, Lizzie."

He pauses, his eyes crinkling happily at her. She knows she's beaming back at him, no harm in that.

"For everything you have done for me. It's ... unprecedented." 

Liz meets his eyes briefly, then goes over to poke the fire. If she says anything the hitch in her throat will betray her. She's going to have to turn around soon.

Red sighs audibly.

"Two more weeks."

***

Every day now, they concentrate on rehabilitation. Liz stretches Red's arm and fingers every hour, then massages his muscles under his pointed direction. 

Every day now, Red uses his crutches more and more, not leaning on his armpits, but properly, using his hands.

They still have a routine, but now Red can bathe himself, make it down to the outhouse, at least in daylight, even shave himself.

Liz misses those slow minutes lathering his face and neck, giving minute attention to Red's face as he tips his head back and closes his eyes, neck bared to her ministrations. She misses the cool of the razor, the pulse at the base of his throat, the way he sighs when she lays a steaming hot towel over his lower face.

When Red closes his eyes, she can pretend to herself that when he opens them, he'll look at her with adoration rather than polite gratitude. 

The last two weeks seem to melt away all at once.

Dembe answers the ham radio right on schedule, promises a helicopter early the next morning, and assures Red that his operations are well underway. He takes down the longitude and latitude Liz finally confides at the end of the call with a low whistle.

Dembe has been looking for them, but not even in the right state.

They sign off, and Liz and Red sit there for a moment, staring at the ham radio.

"You do realize that I'll be gone for months, just getting my business back on its feet?"

Liz shrugs unhappily at Red.

Yes, of course she knows, they've talked about this before.

Dembe's reached out to Cooper, but Liz has a lot of questions to answer when she returns to work, and she's not going to answer all of them. She may not have a job, no matter Red's former value to the agency as an asset. 

It's going to be a while before he has time to help her chase down another blacklister.

"We need to get some sleep."

Red just sits there in his ubiquitous green shirt, hands on his blanket wrapped knees, flexing and contracting his fingers. He's regaining his former dexterity slowly.

"Yes, we do," Liz agrees. 

She doesn't want to leave her warm seat by the fire for the chill of the loft. Everything she's sacrificed for, Red safe and healing and back in his world with Dembe where he belongs, it's all but fulfilled, and now she can't bear the end of their private world.

"Come lie down with me, Lizzie" says Red, heaving himself to his feet and swinging up onto his crutches. "Lie down and sleep in my bed tonight, and we'll talk until one of us falls asleep."

What? Did he really say that?

Red makes his way to the bed without waiting for her answer, just a few short steps. He turns down the heavy covers, lays his blanket and crutches within easy reach at the foot of the bed.

He gets in bed and slides over to one side, the covers bunching a little over his leg cast, then gives the bed beside him a little pat.

"Don't you want to be able to say that you've slept with Raymond Reddington?"

His tone is so deliberately arch that it breaks the paralysis Liz feels seized her as he began to speak.

She rises, stretches, crosses to stand by the bed.

"Close your eyes," she says, then turns her back to shimmy out of her jeans, unhooking her bra and sliding it out one sleeve,then the other, without removing her tee shirt. She drops her clothes on the floor and slides into bed, rolling onto her side to face Red.

"Hi" she whispers.

"Well, hello Lizzie."

He reaches out one hand to stroke her hair, just for a second, turning his head to face her.

She can feel the warmth of his body, she knows the rhythm of his breath, the way he smells, the little sound he makes in the back of his throat when he swallows.

He can only sleep on his back, but the bed squeaks as he rolls toward her, so very close, not touching. 

"Lizzie" he whispers.

"Red."

Their eyes meet. She can't think of anything she wants to say to him. The lines around his mouth twitch. It's too dark for her to be sure why. He closes his eyes for a moment.

"Come here."

She scoots closer as Red puts his arm around her, pulling her against him.

Daringly, she lays her head on his chest, tangles her bare legs against him.

"Sleep, Lizzie, you're safe with me."

Of course she's safe. This is where she belongs.

Liz snuggles closer and matches her breathing to his. 

Entwined, at last they sleep.


	11. Back to Real Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They leave the cabin

Dembe bounds out of the clear bubble of the helicopter and seizes Red in a tight embrace. They pound each other briefly on the back and Red can feel the tight, nervous energy coursing through his friend. Dembe's face is stern and drawn, but he's wearing a truly elegant Italian suit, complete with pocket handkerchief and a watch on a chain.

Red is wearing over-large sweats, one leg cut open from ankle to knee to accommodate his cast.

"Come, come, the jet is waiting for us in Boerne."

Dembe claps Red gently on the shoulder, then puts out his hand to Liz, who is standing a little behind Red, one hand clutching several plastic shopping bags stuffed with clothes and shoes.

"You are a miracle worker" he says to Liz, and Red smiles to see her face light up at the compliment. She crosses to the helicopter under Dembe's guidance and climbs inside, then he passes her bags up to her, having somehow extracted them from her grasp as they walked. 

Red turns a full circle, balancing on his crutches. From this flat spot on a hill, he can only see the broad oak branches that conceal the cabin, not the roof, shed or the spring. A line of faint green marks the little creek as it twists away down a ravine between the rocks.

A pale blue sky crossed by jet contrails arches high overhead.

Will he ever see this place again?

"Come." 

Dembe beckons to him. He holds the crutches and helps Red to climb up into the cabin. Liz is already sitting up beside the pilot, leaving Red to sit with Dembe in the passenger seats.

It's too noisy to talk, so Red concentrates on grinning at Dembe, enjoying the view, and anticipating a protracted hot shower in the private bathroom on his jet.

Once they're aboard and airborne, Red offers Liz the first shower, but she demurs.

"I've got to wash my hair, and that will take way too long," she smiles at him and Dembe impartially. "But Dembe, I will take a glass of white wine, if you have any chilled."

Dembe pops a cork and pours her a generous glass. He hands it to her before pouring one for himself. 

"You must tell me about the security of the hideaway" he says lifting his glass to Liz in a toast. "All I could see from the air was a cabin. Not even fences."

"There are only two gates on the perimeter, and they enter the land through properties in a long term leasehold."

She grins, then takes a long deep swallow of her wine.

"Oh, that's so good."

Red balances on his crutches, listening. He doesn't need wine, but he wants to watch Dembe's face.

"One of the tenants breeds bulls, and the other breeds Rottweilers."

"Really?"

Dembe's white teeth flash in an appreciative smile. Red can tell he's already trying to decide where to apply this very tactic somewhere on one of Red's many properties.

Red gives them both a little wave and proceeds through his bedroom to the shower, hopping into the bathroom on one foot and leaving his crutches propped against the wall.

He assumes Dembe has set up x-ray appointment for him; if his leg is sufficiently healed, he wants the cast removed and a 24 hour team of hot and cold running physical therapists to start whipping him back into fighting shape. There will almost certainly be fighting in his future.

It's harder than he expects to get out of his clothes alone, but he manages by the simple expedient of sitting on the bathroom floor so he's not wavering on one leg.

"Oh hell."

Red crawls into the shower and then pulls himself back up to standing, leaning against the narrow shower walls like a rock climber.

He's going to get the cast very wet and soggy - if his leg isn't healed, they can just apply a new cast.

The hot water sluices over him and he lets it pound against his closed eyelids before he soaps himself carefully head to toe.

Cleanliness is bliss.

More damage, more scars. But he's once again lived to fight another day.

Red shuts off the water, reaches for a towel. Such big, soft, pristine towels, not scrubbed in a cold stream and line-dried to a scratchy stiffness.

He uses three and throws a fourth on the floor to stand on, despite the bath mat.

Examining himself in the mirror, he's pale from eight weeks spent mostly indoors, pasty even, and he's done an imperfect job of shaving himself, random hairs sprouting at the base of his neck, and the circles beneath his eyes are deep and dark.

Red barely slept all night, trying to memorize the feeling of Lizzie in his arms. In his bed. The smell of her hair, the little sounds she makes in her sleep.

Safe now in the privacy of his own personal space, Red lets himself think about how careful, how modest she's been around him. By now Lizzie has seen, touched, cleansed every inch of his body, been privy to all his bodily functions, dressed and undressed him, tucked him in bed every night.

Lizzie changed her clothing only up in the loft, bathed out on the porch or down in the spring. Even their last night, Red remembers running his fingers so lightly up the curve of Lizzie's bare thigh, encountering the tight line of the elastic of her panties cutting into her hip.

He's got to let her go.

It's what she wants, though she'd never say that to his face, loyal girl that she is.

He wants to scream, he wants to howl, but instead Red applies his customary cologne to his face and neck, and starts dressing in the suit Dembe has placed on the hook on the inside of the bathroom door, unsurprised by the Velcro straps, custom tailored into one leg of the pinstripe dress pants that will allow him to fit them over his cast.

His tie is in the right front pocket of the suit, his watch in the left, his wallet a thin sheaf of Italian leather tucked deep in his breast pocket, crackling with crisply ironed bills in three major currencies.

Fully dressed, he steps out into the lounge of the plane, tipping his fedora in tribute to Dembe. He's just using one crutch now, enjoying the feel of shoes on his feet.

Liz looks around and for a moment, he can swear she's going to choke on her wine, but she swallows successfully and then smiles at him, a familiar, distant smile. An Agent Keen smile.

"Red. You're back to your old self again."

"Your turn in the shower" he informs her, touching the brim of his hat to her as well. She grabs her plastic bags and heads for the bathroom, snagging the half-empty bottle of wine on her way. The light aluminum door to his bedroom bangs shut, and beyond it, he hears the shower start running again.

"Now tell me about these shares" he says to Dembe. "I assume you're going after his real estate first?"

The two of them seat themselves as one, Dembe spreading maps, documents, and a variety of papers across the table in front of Red. He squints down, trying to read three documents at the same time.

"It's all just planning" offers Dembe, after a few minutes.

"And sabotage" returns Red.

The two of them grin at each other in mutual understanding, then Red starts reading again, sorting the papers into piles as he reads. It's been so long since he's done anything resembling real work. He hopes Lizzie takes her time in the shower.


	12. And Onwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What comes next?

Moving women around the globe takes more than just passports and cover stories.

Safe houses are needed, storefronts and offices and residences where all the bedrooms are upstairs, and sometimes clinics, if the trade is rough.

Dembe has carefully researched the major markets in which Red's enemy is currently operating; Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California; Houston, Texas; and Flushing, New York.

It's taken major black hat IT talent to pick apart Chinese firewalls and put them seamlessly back together after the needed addresses and the names of the dummy owners have been obtained.

While the hacking was in progress, Dembe put together a multimillion dollar real estate consortium to attack those markets, ostensibly engaging in urban renewal, but actually targeting particular properties.

Best of all, this part of his plan is legal.

The eviction notices will be served by local constables or mailed by unyielding, incorruptible property managers.

"Hit them in the profit, it never fails."

Red feels so good to be back in the game that he barely flinches when Lizzie rolls her eyes at him, her damp hair pinned tightly to her head in her best approximation of a professional bun.

Over the last eight weeks, Red doesn't remember her cutting her hair once.

"Are you dropping me off soon?" Liz speaks briskly, as if she is anticipating an immediate, affirmative answer.

She is scrubbed clean, made up, and professionally dressed in a brand new suit and heels she's produced from one of her plastic bags. She evidently expects Red to drop her off at the Post Office, even though they're in a jet, not a car, and she's now on her fourth glass of wine.

"The rent on your apartment has been paid, and all the bills as well," says Dembe softly. "Go home and sleep, Elizabeth. Director Cooper can wait for tomorrow."

Red nods sharply in concurrence. Now that's she's really leaving, he wants to get it over with. Wheels up and onward.

They touch down in rain and a long black car is waiting for her. Ressler is leaning against the car, wearing a heavy raincoat with a hood.

She's called them, despite Dembe's advice.

All at once Liz is leaving the plane, giving Dembe a warm hug, pausing to stare down at Red when he doesn't rise from his seat.

His leg hurts like hell. He's going to need another cast.

"I'll be in touch, Lizzie."

If he stands up he's going to scream, Ressler will rush the plane, and won't that be a new flavor of humiliation?

"Good-bye, Red" she says, and then leans over to whisper a phrase to him from one of the novels they had read to each other, a novel they both loved.

"Live, and so confound our enemies."

Then she's down the stairs and the plane is whining, pulling away the moment she's on the ground, and he's far from her and getting farther every second as his jet screams away into the anonymity that he needs. The solitude that he once preferred.

"Another drink please, Dembe?"

"Here, take the bottle."

***

A fat man in a black silk suit walks back and forth in his private office. His feet in their elegantly hand-embroidered slippers hurt, but he doesn't summon one of the six naked young women awaiting his pleasure in the king-size rosewood bed upstairs to rub his feet, or dance to distract him. Or perform any other act that occurs to his jaded imagination. 

Instead, he summons his accountant.

"Cancel the contract. We can't afford it anymore."

The thin, bespectacled man just nods and then bows.

He was an assassin once, and now he's grateful for his position of responsibility.

He could have told his employer it would come down to this, but he's not planning to ever speak the worthy name of Raymond Reddington aloud.

Their accounts are in the red, more than half their assets seized, and now there are rumors afloat of a secret UN Task Force.

Fortunately, prudently, he's already got an exit strategy. It's going to squander many of the resources his employer had set aside for his own exit strategy, but the accountant will be long gone before that fact is discovered.

Once an assassin, always an assassin.

***

It's been almost two months now.

Liz is back on the job. She hasn't heard anything from Red, but Dembe mailed her a postcard from New Zealand, so she assumes all is well.

Ressler is trying to convince her to adopt a kitten; his new girlfriend works in animal rescue.

Cooper has complimented her on her muscular appearance and advised her to re-certify with more weapons. She's practicing every other night at the firing range, and also taking a yoga class to try and reduce stress.

It's not stress.

She just misses Red so much.

It's after ten when her doorbell rings.

She flips on the porch light, hand on her weapon.

It's Red, enveloped in a long beige overcoat, eyes shadowed by his customary fedora. 

Liz unlocks the door and ushers him in. There's no car on the street. He seems to have appeared out of thin air.

"What are you doing here at this hour?"

She holsters her gun, sets it on the table by the door, and gestures toward the small living room of her minimally furnished one bedroom apartment.

She has a futon couch, and a battered black metal and glass coffee table, and a truly enormous flat screen TV.

She's never home, anyway.

Red takes off his hat and looks around as if trying to decide where to put it.

"Red? Why are you here?"

"You were out for dinner?"

Red frowns at her perfectly innocuous black blazer. Her blouse beneath it is filmy black gauze; her short dressy skirt is figured black velvet.

Her three inch patent heels lie discarded on the floor by the front door.

"Yes, Red, I do eat out with friends sometimes."

She slips off the blazer and tosses it on the couch. She's just walked in the door.

"Ah, friends."

Red is twisting the brim of his hat in his hands. His fingers move perfectly now, she notices with a rush of joy. He's barely even limping.

"Can I get you a drink?"

Red follows her into her tiny kitchen, cheaply furnished with dark cabinets and speckled granite.

There's one stool at the french cafe table by the window. Red seats himself and sets his hat neatly on the table.

Liz pours scotch for them both, just two fingers. She hands him his drink and stands with her back braced against the cold stone of the kitchen counter.

"You said you would call."

Oh, she did not mean to say that.

Red rubs his head, gives her a careful smile.

"I suppose you'll have to consider this visit, getting in touch. I've been out of pocket, cleaning up loose ends."

Liz takes a sip of her Scotch.

"Is it done?"

Red nods, looking down into his glass.

"Yes, Lizzie, and now we find ourselves at a crossroads."

"You mean, you don't want to work with the FBI again."

Cooper has complained bitterly to her that Red won't take his calls, and Dembe's phone is long since disconnected. She's pretty sure she'll never be accepted as a full member of the team again.

"You're not listening, Lizzie" he reproves her.

"It's late, Red, and I'm tired."

Liz turns and sets her Scotch glass in the sink without finishing her drink. She turns back to find Red watching her with a peculiar intensity.

"Just tell me straight out what you want from me, Red" she says firmly, "or get the hell out of my house."

"I want to stay."

He stands and takes off his overcoat, folds it neatly and sets it on the table beside his hat. He's wearing an immaculate three piece suit, a starched shirt, a frighteningly tasteful tie.

What is he doing now?

"Red?"

He stops just in front of her, crowding her up against the lip of the sink. He's standing so close she can hardly think. She looks down at the hand carved buttons on his suit vest, then back to his face.

"I want to stay here with you, Lizzie."

"Red? Is everything okay?"

"I want to stay with you forever." He looks around, as if realizing what he's just said. "Well, perhaps not in this exact apartment."

She can't help it, she's missed him so much, and now when she asks him for a straight answer, all she gets is nonsense.

"Raymond Reddington, tell me right now what you want from me."

"I never want to leave you. Ever again."

She blinks at him,and he purses his lips helplessly, blinking back at her. Rocking back and forth a little on his heels.

"Are you making me a job offer? Trying to move in with me? Offering to marry me?"

His mouth opens, then closes again without a sound emerging. It reminds her of that first day in the hospital, how he looks coming out from under anesthesia. 

"Can you be more unclear?"

"The latter."

"What?!?"

Red takes a step backwards, digs a velvet box out of an inside pocket of his suit coat, hands it to her without opening it.

"It's perfectly sized, and it's not a blood diamond, it came from a Russian collection. Fully authenticated. Dembe has all the papers."

He's babbling now, but his eyes are still intent.

She opens the box. The solitaire is so large, no one could possibly believe it isn't glass.

"Just try it on, Lizzie."

Red's voice is low and warm and inviting. He's somehow managed to pour all his nerves into her. Liz touches the ring with her forefinger, her hands shaking.

Red takes the box from her before she drops it, extracts the ring, takes hold of her left hand and then pauses.

It's a long pause.

She had thought it was hopeless. Impossible to imagine, that either of them would ever marry again. She's never even kissed him. Not properly.

Liz nods, and he slides the ring onto her finger.

They both stare at each other. Liz suspects that she looks just as terrified as he does.

'Stay" she says, leaning towards him, opening her mouth for his kiss. "Stay for tonight, tomorrow, forever."

Red takes a sharp breath, drawing back a little. His brow creases in a frown.

"We need to be in Zurich tomorrow." He glances at his hat on the table. "I bought us a villa, on a blue, blue lake. The exact shade of your eyes."

He'll never be easy. She doesn't want easy.

Liz puts her hands around the back of his neck, rubs her fingers into the short, silvery stubble Red considers a proper haircut.

"You will kiss me when I want to be kissed," she tells him, stepping so close that their bodies touch, feeling her short skirt riding up as she raises up on tiptoe.

His eyes crinkle as his face relaxes into an unexpectedly boyish smile, so wide she can see his teeth, even the two implants on the right that he doesn't like anyone to see.

"Well, of course, Lizzie. How could you ever doubt me?"

She curves her fingers so her nails are tracing the line of his neck, dipping beneath his collar.

"Now, Red," she holds his gaze. "I've been waiting for you forever."

He leans towards her, stops just short of her mouth, his achingly familiar, whiskey scented breath hot and moist against her parted lips.

"I've been waiting for you longer."

Liz closes the distance between them, feels his arms come around her at last, lifting her off her feet.

Red kisses her as if he's inside her already, their bodies moving and breathing as one, a perfect crescendo.

The world is not empty; it's golden and glorious, filled with beauty and adventure and endless, sensual delight, just waiting out there for them to explore it. Together.


End file.
